A Pair of Brass Balls
by iscariot
Summary: Bittter. Jim Brass? Never
1. Default Chapter

_Well I thought I'd do something a little different. There were several reasons for this, the primary one being catharsis; more explicitly, cathartic release from the agony that is Song For The Solo Dancer, which was driving me nuts. Frankly, I needed a break from it...and now, I can happily resume my – seemingly eternal – torture._

_This standalone piece is, for me, an experiment in writing an internal monologue, which explains the somewhat funky punctuation; you don't, at least to my mind, think in complete sentences._

_Finally, why Brass? I think Jim Brass is seriously overlooked in the CSI Fanfiction_

_Universe – I guess too many people are figuring out ways for Grissom to bonk Sara or Catherine [or both] or Sara to bang Nick...or something. Anyway, here's Brass with his singularly cynical view of the world._

_Please review if you like this...or if you hate it. Thanks_

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I'm older than God.

At least that's what my joints tell me.

Each time I haul myself out of bed and stand before the bathroom mirror I wonder if I have really sinned that much.

That the lines on my face aren't a testament of having seen far more than any person should.

Sometimes, I wish I could forget. Of course it's hard to forget things that are imprinted on your soul with a phosphor-like intensity; it's no wonder that I feel like a photographic negative for the morass that optimistically calls itself humanity

Actually, it would have been nice if I had been reaping the wages of sin; they pay more than my current salary, the health plan, however, is questionable.

It's a wonder I'm not bitter.

What I am is tired.

I vaguely remember the words of a particularly ignorant philosopher rambling on about 'man's inhumanity to man' or something. Forget inhumanity, sick sums things up quite nicely: usually with a side order of stupid. Despite what television would suggest, your average criminal is not an insane genius, nor grievously wronged. Your average criminal is an idiot with neither the intelligence nor the social skills to articulate their issues.

Most people. Normal people. Respectable. Upstanding. Law-abiding people. That special one percent of the population. Take responsibility for their actions and get on with their lives. The rest look for an excuse.

Isn't there a contradiction?

No

How can one percent equate to 'most' of the population?

My maths. My rules.

Do I really think that ninety-nine percent of the population are criminals?

Yes.

So why, if the majority of the population are criminals aren't we swamped in a continually expanding crime wave?

Simple. While the criminal population are stupid, even more are lazy and more still both lazy and stupid; the biggest challenge for these people is programming their video, which taking up the vast majority of their time and mental capacity, leaves few available resources for anything else...

...such as committing crimes other than passing on their questionable genetic heritage.

OK...maybe I am just a little bit bitter.

I believe in justice. But, perhaps more importantly, I believe that people get what they deserve; or they would...if I had my way. The law, to my mind, is not only an ass, but a purebred Jesus donkey complete with palm leaf parade and rapturous reception. Take the death penalty for example, it shouldn't be seen as a last-ditch exemplar of retributive justice but rather as a socially sanctioned cleansing of the gene pool.

Of course, if I had control, the death penalty would be proactive and retrospective.

How, you may ask, can a death penalty be retrospective? Simple. Not only will those who have committed a capital crime be summarily dealt with, but also those who have thought about committing a crime, those who watched someone committing a crime and those who watched someone thinking about committing a crime...

...and their families.

Just to make sure

I was talking to Grissom the other day, hardly surprising since I work with the man, but the crux of the conversation was that I should get a life; this, from Grissom. I thanked him for the thought but questioned whether someone whom had gone rapidly from racing Beetles to playing 'hide the appliance' with a certain 'Lady of the Night' was really in a position to provide a balanced assessment of my leisure-time activities.

But that's Grissom for you.

It's never ceases to amaze me just how many people underestimate the man. Let's face it; if the rumours of Grissom's ignorance of human foibles were accurate then Helen Keller was a televangelist. It's true that at times he's annoyingly oblivious to what's right in front of his nose – something that is generally Sidle-shaped - but oft times he's deliberately oblivious. I think maybe that's Grissom's way of letting people down gently, or at least giving them the opportunity to give up gracefully. For all that Grissom will remove your lungs manually if you screw your work, up he can be disarmingly empathic; look at how he deals with Greg.

When Sanders hit this place I seriously thought about resigning. I felt old. It was like the department had hired my daughter, except that Greg is male and has less fashion sense. During the first week of Sanders I thought Grissom was going to pitch a fit from which he'd never recover for not only did Greg tell Grissom not to bother him, but he also informed Grissom that he was 'down' with procedure and that the Ramones helped him think.

Al Robbins swears he saw Grissom tying a noose in his office.

The only thing that stopped Gil ceremonially lynching the lab tech was the presentation of five lab reports, four DNA samples, three fibres tracked, two suspects cleared and the closing of a ten-year-old case in record time, with no errors; it was like Christmas had come early.

Not that Grissom said anything complimentary to Greg about this; instead he asked why the lab tech hadn't completed the blood work from the multiple nun explosion of the previous week and while Greg went off and sulked and Grissom went and had Greg's pay increased.

Not that he told Greg.

Of course obliviousness isn't the special province of Grissom; when you get down to it Catherine and Warrick are right up there when it comes to gormless ignorance. I'm not sure what the problem is but I'll accept any odds that Catherine's attitude is at the heart of things. While Cath is an excellent CSI, I can't help but think that her time as a stripper has hardened her heart towards the softer side of the human experience; added to that her time as a CSI and I wonder how she manages to raise her kid as well as she does.

You deal with the dregs of human society for long enough and you become like me, and Cath's had it double dose. Sure, Catherine likes men, or reasonable facsimiles thereof: I won't stoop to labelling that scumbag of an ex-husband of hers a 'man'. Also, she's hardly celibate, but I sometimes think she sees men as schmoes or punters and not as a potential mate, and yet, she still flirts with Warrick constantly; maybe she sees him as some sort of untouchable emotional redemption that she won't allow herself to have.

And then there's Warrick.

There's a demon on that man's back and he won't let it get off no matter how much the demon might want to leave. Maybe if Warrick spent a little less time waiting for himself to screw up and a little more time stopping to sniff and smell what's right under his damn nose he might actually get what he wants. Ever since he started, he has been drawn to Catherine like a paedophile to a scout hall.

Forget I said that. I've been here too long. Let's just say that he found Cath attractive from the outset.

It's pathetic.

I thought about locking them both in the cells overnight but decided that was, even by my standards, inhumane. I enjoy playing bad cop-worse cop as much as the next person, but no prisoner should have to be subjected to those two for an extended period; it's almost, but not quite, as bad as the passive/aggressive display that is Sidle on the prowl. Watching Sara, it's no wonder that Grissom ran screaming into the arms of Lady Heather. Yes. No. Yes. Maybe. Yes Hank Yes. No. You Bastard. Make up your mind Grissom. Yes. No. It was enough to make me dizzy and I was just watching.

But what do I know?

My home life is hardly an exemplar of the American domestic bliss. If someone were to paint it, it would more likely be Munch's 'Scream' or possibly Hopper's 'Nighthawks' the image resonates, especially the lone figure with his back to the street. It's not loneliness. Isolation is perhaps a better synonym. Self-imposed isolation. But unlike the figure in the painting I can't turn my back.

The city won't let me.


	2. Dream a little Dream

Once again I've decided to let my inner Brass out to play – truth be told it's an excuse not to have to work on Song For the Solo Dancer, which is giving me fits at the moment, writer's block anyone.

Anyway, once again, I'm playing with the internal monologue thing, although this time I decided to actually put a bit more punctuation in, the first instalment was too lazy, even by my standards of writing it off as an 'experiment.' I've uploaded the correct version this time...the one with the punctuation

Finally, this chapter came about solely through the extremely positive feedback I received for the first instalment; I guess you're all as misanthropic at heart as I, sorry Brass, am...errr...is.

Thank You Thank You Thank You for your reviews and feedback.

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There is something about bureaucrats that makes my hands itch.

No. It's more than that.

It's the urge to shoot.

I can see it now. The press and media adulation for the cop who took the law into his own hands and gunned down the entirety of the City Council's bureaucracy

Some people would give me a medal for that; I'd settle for a new car though, and maybe a good bottle of scotch whiskey, in fact, I'd take anything that blunted the effects of having to deal with the omnipresent stupidity of faceless, anal-retentive paper-pushers.

It's not just the smug, self-righteous attitude, the faux-cheerful, public service persona; or even the natty little button-down shirts that speaks of solid middle-class moral rectitude and mass-market clone values; it's the whole deal. It's the attitude that speaks to their being above you because they – ostensibly - speak for the law; that they are society's bulwark against the slavering hordes of chaos, and that they, and only they, and their pitiful pieces of photocopied regulations and seemingly endless rolls of red tape, can stop society's inevitable descent into barbarism.

I wouldn't trust these people to go to the bathroom alone; however, it's unlikely that they would attempt such a thing without a note from the teacher; or a legal amendment to the local by-laws

...and speaking of the morally upright and anally retentive...

...I've just had the dubious pleasure of Nick Stokes visiting my office.

Now, don't get me wrong, Stokes is a fine CSI and a genuine, good-hearted bastion of moral rectitude; even if he does have a tendency to befriend people who end up as his next case.

But, and it's a large but, he's just so damn wholesome that I have to fight the urge to scrub my office with Whiskey and paper the walls with porn just to reaffirm my more sanguine notion of reality. I'm not sure what it is about Stokes; maybe it's the Texan twang, but every time I see him I have to fight down the image of Michael Landon galloping over a hill wearing a pair of angel wings. God alone knows what the theme music would be; 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam?'

The other thing I don't get is all the pathetic drooling that occurs from the female members of staff whenever Nick's around; with the exception, I gratefully hasten to add, of Catherine and Sara, whom, of course, work with him, and thus either have more sense or have developed some sort of natural immunity.

There's an interesting image, yearly anti-Nick Stokes shots.

So, what's the attraction? Yes, yes, he's vaguely attractive in that stereotypical block- of-wood, television-star way; you only have to watch television to come to the conclusion that these people are cloned; I wonder if Nick comes with a barcode?

...and I'm not old and bitter and if I repeat that often enough I might just believe it.

Anyway...Nick...attractiveness; let's take a look

He's not particularly tall.

He's skinny. Please, 'not fat' does not mean I have lots of muscle it means I don't eat donuts.

...and he has a bad haircut; it's more like a hair doesn't than a do.

If it wasn't for the fact that he is able to find his arse with both hands, and is vaguely useful in an investigation – if only to charm the prostitutes - then Nick would make a wonderful bureaucrat.

Maybe that's why Ecklie hates him so much? Like does call to like after all. Although, I don't think Ecklie charms the prostitutes so much as pays them; I'll have to ask Lady Heather.

Right, back to bureaucrats.

Bastards.

I sometimes think bureaucrats exist solely to see how many hoops they can get those of us who do the actual work to jump through before they'll give us what they want...

...If they feel like it.

I bet they're keeping score too, with the winner being the person who pisses the most people off in a given week.

I'm almost completely certain that the criminal code was written by paper-pushers to protect the criminals. I mean, why the hell do I have to prove the frothing psychopath with the gun in his hand, blood all over him, and a surveillance video showing him committing the crime, is guilty? Surely something that self-evident wouldn't require me to play the legal equivalent of naked twister on an oiled board.

But no.

No only does this guy, or girl - as we're an equal opportunity ball of cotton wool, get the benefit of the doubt, but he/ she also gets a fully paid-up vacation at a five star 'hospital' while they assess the impact his mean mother, who maybe spanked him once, had on him/her, which maybe, might have turned him into an anti-social little dirt-bag; heaven forefend that the perpetrator is actually responsible for their own actions; but then, if we look at our wonderful society, we're never responsible, it's always the other person's fault...

...When I was a kid and I fell out of a tree I went home to my mother, got a Band-Aid and a kiss, and was then sent back up the tree nowadays you're more likely to see a civic action group taking out a lawsuit against the owner of the tree for reckless endangerment, and the child not being let out of the house for the next ten millennia; if they're lucky.

Where was I?

...oh yes...

...And while our nut job is getting the bed-and-breakfast treatment, the poor cop who found the victim is writing out fifty page reports – in triplicate – and then having to justify his arse in five different directions to IAD in order not to get an official censure for doing their job.

Maybe there is something to be said for shoot first and ask questions later. 'Oops, sorry, my gun accidentally went off and shot him six times in the head', sounds wonderfully appealing; although it would be a fair question as to why I would want to waste six bullets on a bureaucrat. As for the actual criminal, if I had my way the conversation would probably follow along like this:

IAD: "You found him like that?"

COP: Nodding vigorously. "Yup."

IAD: "Shot. Execution style."

COP: "YUP."

IAD: "With your gun."

COP: "Nope."

IAD: "We have a ballistics match."

COP: "Maybe it was a bureaucrat?"

IAD: "Like the one, for example, who managed to shoot themselves six times?"

COP: "..."

IAD: "In the back of the head..."

COP: "..."

IAD: "With your gun..."

COP: "...Oops..."

IAD: "Well that's fine then. Have a nice day."

Of course the reality of the situation would see, the cop strapped into old Sparky, the psycho pardoned and the bureaucrat elected for canonisation; and people wonder why most cops quit and become security for multi-million dollar organisations that can afford expensive lawyers.

Now lawyers are another thing entirely.

The best description of a lawyer I have heard compares them to the after-effects of an oil slick where the residual oil has coated innocent wildlife. My job, and that of all fine, upstanding citizens everywhere, is to ensure that the lawyer sorry, oil is wiped off with as little residual damage to the innocent creature in question as possible.

Of course, it's no coincidence that lawyers represent criminals...or maybe it's criminals who represent lawyers; it's sometimes hard to differentiate between the two. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that one stands up in front of the jury and attests to the innocence of the other...

...As I said, they're pretty interchangeable; I mean, who ever heard of an innocent lawyer? To be fair, of which I seem to be doing a lot lately, lawyers have their uses – and I don't mean as in the very old joke sense of blocking drains or baiting rat-traps – for example lawyers can...

...errrr...

...As I was saying, there's no known use for a lawyer whatsoever that doesn't involve impaling or grinding up and using for fertiliser.

I just had a horrible thought. What would happen if a lawyer and a bureaucrat mated? The offspring would resemble something from the fifth level of hell. Actually, I think Ecklie's mother was a bureaucrat and his father was a lawyer. I wonder what Nick's mother does? I know his father is a lawyer.

I would also like to take this opportunity to apologise to all creatures from the fifth level of hell, comparing them to the described abomination was completely uncalled for.

Grissom just popped into my office, apparently there's been another nun explosion; at the city council offices no less, who says there's no such thing as an act of God, or that God doesn't have a sense of humour. Now God would make a great CSI. All it would take would be one 'Let the truth be revealed' and the case would be solved. He – or she, or even it, for that matter – also has that whole 'looking into people's hearts' thing going on, which I guess would be useful.

GOD: Did you do it?

Criminal Scumbag: No

GOD: You're lying.

Criminal Scumbag: No I'm not.

Cue Lightning BLAM /Cue Lightning

GOD: Yes you are...sorry, were.

Captain: Intercom You better clean that mess up...and the chair's coming out of your pay /Intercom

...Oh well, a man can dream.


End file.
